Theocritus, Bion and Moschus Rendered Into English Prose with an Introductiory Essay By A. Lang

by Theocritus

Theocritus of the third century BCE, born at Syracuse, travelled widely in the Greek world. Having studied poetry at Cos with poet and critic Philitas, he composed poetry under patronage, chiefly perhaps at Syracuse and Cos; and then went to Alexandria in Egypt, whose King Ptolemy II (died 246 BCE), pupil of Philitas, befriended him. Here (and at Cos?) he spent the rest of his life. Most lovable of Greek versemakers, Theocritus was the founder of bucolic or pastoral poetry. Of his so-called Idylls, 'Little forms' or pieces (not all are genuine), ten are about pastoral life real or idealised; several are small epics (three are hymns); two are beautiful 'occasional' poems (one about a country walk, one to accompany a gift of a distaff for the wife of his friend Nicias); six are love-poems; several are mimes, striking pictures of common life; and three are specially expressive of his own feelings. The 24 'Epigrams' were apparently inscribed on works of art.Moschus of Syracuse, 2nd century BCE, came next. As a grammarian he wrote a (lost) work on Rhodian dialect. Though he was classed as bucolic, his extant poetry (mainly 'Runaway Love' and the story of 'Europa') is not really pastoral, the 'Lament for Bion' not being Moschus's work.'Megara' may be by Theocritus; but 'The Dead Adonis' is much later.Bion of Phlossa near Smyrna lived in Sicily, probably late 2nd and early 1st century BCE. Most of the extant poems are not really bucolic, but 'Lament for Adonis' is floridly brilliant.The so-called Pattern-Poems, included in the bucolic tradition, are found also in the Greek Anthology.

Genres: Poetry

Unknown Binding

About the author

Theocritus (Greek: Θεόκριτος; born c. 300 BC, died after 260 BC) was a Greek poet from Sicily, Magna Graecia, and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry.

Reviews

[Markus · Rating 4 out of 5]

THEOCRITUS of Syracuse - MOSCHUS of Sicily – BION of Smyrna Three bucolic poets
Theocritus gained great fame with his pastoral poems.
He flourished in circa 278 to 270 BC, in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, Egypt, Alexandria and was a contemporary of Aratus, Callimachus, Nicander, and Apollonius of Rhodes.
Theocritus poems are mostly set in the countryside and feature dialogs as well as singing contests between shepherds. These lonely rustics may have used songs as a natural means of communication. It is quite possible that the idea of a singing contest came to him from real shepherds.
Recurrent names : Adonis, Daphnis, Amaryllis, Comatas, Polyphemus, Galatea and Tityrus. In the background, we have Nymphs, Pan, Priapus, Artemis, Appollo of the flocks,
This collection also contains Love songs, Idylls, Fragments, Epigrams, a poem on an event in the Argonautica, a surprising poem on the wedding of Helen to Menelaus, and on Heracles’s killing the great lion and more on Heracles works and adventures, as well as others.
Moschus is also a composer of bucolic verse, Theocritus was first, Moschus second and Bion third.
From Moschus we have here a witty narrative of the girl Europa beeing abducted by Zeus in the shape of a white bull, a poem called Lament for Bion, then Megara, Lament for Adonis and fragments of others as well as pattern poems, where the word are written to form patterns, like an axe, an egg, a pan pipe and altars.
Though the beauty of the poetry gets lost in translation, I enjoy the rich content of Ancient Greek’s philosophy, mythology, and history.

[Taylor Swift Scholar · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m usually pretty into ancient poetry, but I was not into this. Is it boring because of the translation or is the original text super boring? I do not know.

[Lewis Carnelian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theocritus stands as the earliest example of the pastoral, and, along with some misc. pieces by Moschus and Bion, these are the epitome of the Greek pastoral that would be carried on by Virgil and onwards towards through the Renaissance and finding its way to Spenser, and, by virtue of that, perhaps its closest last flowering (in terms of innovation) in Keats. I became fascinated by the pastoral by a preeminent Renaissance work, Jacopo Sannazaro's Arcadia (1480) and that through parallels with Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), a work of ruin-wandering and Love—both have a kind of Faeryland sense of etherealness and Other Worldness. Stretching back towards the time of Theocritus, these poems stand in concert with Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica (a contemporary) as a self-aware enshrining of Hellenic mythic culture, as the writing was on the wall, so to speak, with the rise of the Romans. While the Argonautica presents a kind of legendary travelogue of epic proportions, complete with the decaying corpse of a God, Theocritus mines a mythical ideal of ultramundane mundanity—the limbo of shepherds forever competing in songs over their unrequited loves—the ultimate "emo". Not of all his idylls are pastorals, but the others display the same sense of self-awareness, perhaps reaching its height with a hilarious poem of two city women gossiping as they go to a religious festival. All display a complicated fecundity with their subject matter, dare I say more than Virgil's interpretation or even Sannazaro? It reminds me of any innovator in a genre compared to the imitators: the imitators must follow the rules, the innovator creates the rules. These you can lost in. At the end of the book come some much later "pattern poems" that really have nothing to do with pastorals, but the meta-altar created through language of the last one that enshrines the idea that Thought is more lasting than any edifice is a fitting coda to these works from over two thousand years ago.